Reflections on Awakening, part 9

Today i discovered a simple way of staying present and preventing thoughts from filling up a state of still awareness: While walking home i not just looked at, listened to, smelled and felt my surroundings, but i started to continuously verbalise my sense perceptions, as if describing them to a remote telepathic friend. "Now i look at a green field with a few yellow flowers ... now i listen to a large plane passing in the distance ... now i feel a cool breeze coming from the left ... now i look at the pavement composed of red-brown rectangular stones ..." Although this method comes close to the 'labelling' discouraged by Eckhart Tolle, it helps me to remain focussed and creates a wall of present-related words which keep out poisonous thoughts about past and future. I hope that in due course this verbalisation will be replaced by emptiness, i.e. a vacuum of pure awareness fulfilling the same function without labelling.

(picture: 'Cosmic Leaf' by Diana Calvario)